The Paideia School

Every school is a complex social community with the assigned task of passing onto the younger generation some of the knowledge and skill acquired by the older generation. It is especially important to us at Paideia that we examine what we are teaching in addition to academic knowledge: how we view the larger human community, how we treat each other as individuals, how we relate to the physical environment, how we view the process of learning. We need to examine what we teach as part of the way we live and interact with each other as a community of adults and children. We presume that families choose Paideia in part because they perceive that the school shares many of their values. While the primary teaching of values belongs to the family, the school is in the unique position of being able to mediate between a more impersonal social order and the intensely personal family experience. It is the school's responsibility to help prepare children for a place in the society; we also hope that the school environment can have some of the personal depth and meaningfulness of family life. We hope that our students will be prepared not only to live in the world but to improve it. These principles already exist at Paideia, and they will continue to be expressed in the life of the school. We list and define them because we recognize the importance of saying out loud what we treasure: Excellence and Hard Work Attitudes Towards Learning Respect for Diversity Social Responsibility Egalitarianism Empathy Development of an Ethical Self Commitment to an Environmental View An Appreciation of the Importance of the Present